Intergalactic Summit

Because we seceded, yes.

If we'd come back and taken over the whole Federation, you might have a point. Instead, we came back, liberated our stolen property, put measures in place to guard it against being stolen a second time, and left it at that. All we wanted was the return of what was rightfully ours, so that's all we took.



See, what allows the Intaki, Jin Mei and Mannar (what few are left of them) to happily exist as social minorities inside the Federation is that by and large their morality is aligned with that of the people of Gallente Prime. (roughly, more or less, by and large and in general)

What made it such a sticky problem for the people of Caldari prime was that a core functional point of our morality is completely diametrically opposed to the Federation ideal. I know that this is an oversimplification, but most Caldari believe that the individual serves the state, whereas most Gallente believe that the state serves the individual. Unlike the ethnicities you mentioned, the people of Caldari prime simply could not have remained in the Federation without adopting an entirely foreign code of ethics and by doing so losing many of our defining principles.

Doing so would, I guarantee, have torn us in half.

Any relation to Veikitamo?

I don't like the word 'liberated', it has a strong gallentean stench.
But yes, the planet is ours and we fight for what belongs to us. Gallentean swines should already learn the lesson, that if they take something from Caldari, Caldari always come back.

I was referring to the period of outward colonial expansion from Luminaire upon the reverse engineering of VH-451 in YC -648. Caldari colonies were already established by the time of Sotiyo-Urbaata drive in YC -415 which only further accelerated colonial growth and expansion. Contact was already made with the Intaki in Placid and the Mannar in Essence 27 and 2 years respectively prior to the advent of warp technology.

The point I was making is that it seems little attention these days are paid to the history of colonial expansion in current Gallente-Caldari discourse. The main catalyst behind the Federation was to provide common cause between what were once idependent and scattered worlds and people in a fair and just framework of joint economic and military co-operation. The reality it seems is that certain segments of Gallentean society reverted to the thinking of the CDS and believed the political majority they then had in the Federal Senate gave them the right to dictate terms to other "unenlightened" people and worlds - completely ignoring colonial rights in favour of further centralization of the Federal government and apparatus in their own interests.

The rise of Caldari nationalism and the secession was a direct response to the Federation and the economic, military and political apparatus it was creating which was seen as a threat to colonial independence and Caldari corporate rights - not the Gallente as a people or culture. A fine distinction, but a distinction nonetheless I find.




Yes. She is my sister.

Very well, then. Thank you for the clarification.


I could say that you gave up any claim to your home planet through the peace settlement after the war, but I know you wouldn't agree. Truth to tell, if our positions had been reversed, neither would I.

That our homeworlds are in the same star system is one of the greatest tragedies of New Eden history.

Believe it or not, over the past several years my general impression has been that these are getting more civil and we're each getting our messages across. Through repeated percussive application, admittedly.

But I still think there's more mutual respect and understanding between the Gallente and Caldari capsuleers who frequent the IGS than there was five years ago. At least, among those of us who were here five years ago. There are always newcomers who haven't previously had that contact and are still stuck on their nationalist dogma.

The point I made by joining Re-Awakened Technologies (when it was still part of Electus Matari) is that you don't resolve disputes by closing your borders, sticking your fingers in your ears and singing. You resolve them by trying to understand where the other side is coming from.

This is a valuable process because it effectively constitutes market research. You learn how to advertise your ideas for different target demographics. You learn how to assimilate other people's intellectual product into your own philosophy for the sake of its improvement.

You learn (and this is directed at some people here) that understanding where somebody is coming from, and even agreeing with them on some points, does not cause a catastrophic collapse in your own ethics. I've found over these last seven years of discourse with pilots from the Federation and the Republic that my own understanding of Caldari philosophy and morality has expanded enormously. Ironically, doing all the things that would cause the Patriot bloc to say "Good Caldari do not do that" has, I think, made me a better Caldari.

It's redefined my idea of patriotism. I no longer thing of patriotism as automatic abstract love and obedience. I think of it now as a duty in the same vein as an engineer has to their engine. To love it, to maintain it, to tune it and to fix it when it goes wrong. Patriotic duty requires criticism and involvement, and I've only learned that lesson by looking abroad to the examples of other cultures. I've learned that if you love somebody, sometimes the way to show that love is by calling them on it when they're being an idiot.

We all have much to learn from each other. And nowadays my question to people who stick their fingers in their ears and sing rather than listen and learn is "what are you afraid of?"

And the process that taught me all of this has involved a lot of shouting and swearing. It turns out that, however vicious they may get, arguments can be constructive. Sure, the Caldari and Gallente got a lot of aggression and bad blood to work off between each other. Here, we're doing it with words and I think moving towards if not peace then at least mutual understanding.

I doubt that the Minmatar and Amarr will ever reach that point. Though I blame the Amarr for that. They have faith after all.

Caldari Prime is terraformed.

Seriously, that's not even a secret, the geology and ecology of the planet is only explainable through a massive terraforming project. There are archaeological sites on Caldari Prime exploring the automated machinery that regulated the process. Hell, during the war the biggest and most intact of the facilities were refugee camps from the orbital bombardment.

The same is true for a great many of the Temperate worlds in New Eden, the precursor civilization before our own seemed to do it a lot.



That's pure speculation, and fallacious reasoning to boot. They could equally have been there competing for a resource. Or different resources and didn't mind each other's presence. Or the two planets might have been the front line of a war, the equivalent of two lines of trenches in the mud.

With humans, evidence of physical proximity is not evidence of peaceful coexistence.

Perhaps you are simply very poor at expressing yourself to people whose linguistic patterns were formed in the State? To be fair, I interpreted 'desired to be neighbours' to means precisely what Stitcher-haan did. Perhaps it has something to do with linguistic patterns as they form in the State - but to me what you said suggests they were desirous of living near to each other. Of course the truth is that they were desirous of living in two separate places which merely happened to be placed very closely.

Perhaps your Intaki language is simply more subtle, but in Caldari speech it is assumed that the stated case is the motivation. In order to clear up your sentence you might say something like "Perhaps there was some other reason that they desired to live in two different places that are close to one another."

This is an interesting and prescient observation, on which I feel obligated to comment. The Intaki people are highly motivated to maintain social order and peaceful interaction by nature - our culture is shaped by a need to cooperate to survive in dense and dangerous jungle, so our language and thinking is carefully divided between the regard we give our friends as opposed to that which we give our peers. One might say that every native Intaki lives at least three lives: his public life, his private life, and his spiritual life.

As such, it is common among our people to live in close proximity with others that we might not otherwise like privately for reasons of appealing to social or spiritual status. Disagreement or even dislike is not seen as a premise for shunning and division.

For example, one might know a holder of public office. It is seen as desirable, necessary, and your duty by society to show respect to this person in public and even to seek association with them, even if you and everyone else know that this person may be a moral degenerate. Denouncements, shunning and public smearings of this person would never happen, even during an election. Rather, their social status is doggedly and politely upheld, at least until they are removed from office, and perhaps even afterward.

Similarly, a village or settlement might split for serious religious, social or economic reasons. Even though there may be underlying anger between the two villages, this is never expressed in public. Indeed, the inhabitants of the original village would likely help the others leave, giving them gifts and well-wishes on the way out. Relatively shortly after, efforts would be made to seek trade relationships and renewed personal relationships with the people of the new village. This state of positive neighboring relationships is considered ideal, even if personal friendships were broken in the process.

This nature and view of relationships is why Intaki colony planets have such diversity in choices of government structures. From Monarchy to Popular Democracy and everything in between; on Intaki worlds, you can see them all. Government is not seen as a matter of absolutes and ideologies, but rather a way of achieving social and economic order, meant to be experimented with and easily discarded if necessary. All Intaki read the Suthras and so we are united by our spirituality, even if we are divided in other ways.

We have fought wars, and we do fight personally if necessary - we have a very complex and ancient system of martial arts - but these things are rare, seen as an absolute last resort, and historically have almost never been done in anger. Verbal threats and personal combat (village and city "champions" still exist, even today) are one thing, but large-scale war and long-term states of societal conflict are seen as a shameful and embarrassing way to live. Rather, war is seen as something that should be done dispassionately and quickly as possible, with the goal of seeking a single decisive victory, as prolonging war increases the suffering of innocents.

I think that these remarks may help shed a great deal of light on the behavior of the Intaki toward the other races, and perhaps some of my own comments and behavior on the boards here.